This invention relates to gardening and farming and more particularly to accessories such as plant supports.
Providing support for plants has several benefits. A plant, such as a tomato or pepper, which has a fragile stem that is prone to breakage when exposed to strong winds, and bending when it produces heavy fruit, will benefit from an external support structure, which will reduce breakage and damage to the stem, and will also keep ripe fruit from weighing down limbs until the fruit touches the ground where it may rot.
A common method of supporting fruit bearing plants included using a single stake to which the plant was tied, and retied as it grew taller; tying was time consuming and restricted movement of the plant, which often caused breakage or bruising at the tie point.
Prior art solutions using spiral or curving wires to eliminate the need for tying a plant to a stake have had deficiencies avoided by this invention. Some had no vertical support or only supported the wire at the top or bottom of a stake. Others could not be adjusted before or after a plant began to grow. Some required multiple stakes for support, while others were not easily disassembled for shipping, marketing, or storage after the plant growing season ends. Those using a spiral support made the spiral from solid material, which had a poor strength to weight ratio, and was not compressible.